Adrien Barton

Adrien Barton holds master-level degrees in mathematics and physics (Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon), as well as a PhD in philosophy of sciences (University Paris 1 Panthéon – Sorbonne). He is a postdoctoral researcher at the Interdisciplinary research group on medical computer science (GRIIS).

His current research concerns applied ontology and applied ethics. Applied ontology is an interdisciplinary research field that aims at representing reality by using logical and computer tools. It enables information exchange between various data sources in order to support, among others, the development of learning health systems fostering personalized medicine. Applied ontology and philosophical ontology benefit from each other when they aim at representing, for example, similarity, identity, change, causality, probability and part/whole relations (mereology). Applied ontology also interacts with philosophy of sciences when it aims at representing, for example, diseases, medical risks and biophysical entities. His research in applied ethics currently focuses on the question of consent to secondary use of clinical data for medical research.